> I suppose I should have clarified that always defecting is optimal if you're optimizing purely selfishly for material goods. First I disagree that "success"

> I suppose I should have clarified that always defecting is optimal if you're optimizing purely selfishly for material goods. First I disagree that "success" is to be considered only in terms of accumulating material goods. It's also not JUST about feeling fulfilled and loved. Second, I'm not denying that people are sometimes involved in "games" where always defect is indeed optimal. My objection is to the claim that always defect is universally optimal, even if you narrow "success" down to just maximizing wealth. And, as I stated above, even prisoner's dilemma games tend to have tit-for-tat as the dominant strategy, since most games are repeated an unknown number of times. That being said, there is an important element of competitiveness in capitalism. When you negotiate your salary (or that of your employees), you and the counterparty have conflicting interests. If you're naîve when playing the capitalism "game", you're likely to be taken advantage of. I don't consider this a "defect" situation though, and definitely not a prisoner's dilemma "game". Capitalism tends to be a positive-sum game. This positive sum comes from a side effect of a free market, namely that supply and demand (including for labor) acts as a kind of computation algorithm that generally leads to more efficient than any organization is able plan using a top-down approach. Imposing always-cooperate into capitalism (such as through labor union negotiated wages) may actually REDUCE this positive sum. And if there is a game where the sum increases if at least one side defects, then it's not a prisoner's dilemma game at all. > If you look at an always-defect player, they might be cooperative in 9/10 or 99/100 situations because only 1/10 or 1/100 were prisoner's dilemmas where they could benefit by defecting. If 1/100 "games" are single-play prisoner's dilemma games, then we shouldn't be surprised if many chose to defect in those specific games. That actually doesn't bother me. Those people who defect in those games, but are cooperative 99% of the time are still probably behaving better than what I generally expect from people. If you expect people to NEVER defect, then you may want to adjust your expectations. Basically such an expectation is the very essence of being naîve, and will act as a magnet on people who regularly take advantage of other people.